Access to electricity stagnates, leaving globally 730 million in the dark

Latest IEA data show that 730 million people worldwide still lacked access to electricity in 2024, a decline of only 11 million from 2023. This pace is slower than the annual progress achieved before the pandemic and confirms the IEA’s earlier estimates. Preliminary 2025 data suggest the trend will continue. Progress remains fragile. In many sub-Saharan African countries, population growth continues to outpace electrification. Debt burdens, which were still elevated after the Covid-19 pandemic and the global energy crisis, along with cuts in international aid are weighing on progress. As a result, the number of people without access to electricity has remained largely unchanged since 2020.

Developing Asia reached a 98% access rate in 2024. India and Indonesia now have universal access, leaving most of the remaining gap in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Myanmar, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which together account for 83% of the region’s population still without electricity. Progress has stalled since 2021, with four of the five countries showing slower progress than before the pandemic.

Latin America is close to universal access, with 98% of the population connected in 2024. But the last few percentage points are proving difficult. Remote areas such as the Andean Highlands and the Amazon remain underserved, and at the current pace, it could take 15 years to close the gap. Honduras and Haiti face the largest challenges. In Haiti, about half the population still lacks electricity, and progress in 2024 was 56% below the 2015–2019 average.

Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for eight out of ten people globally without electricity. The number of people lacking access grew between 2020 and 2022 but has since begun to fall, though progress is concentrated in a handful of countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, and Mozambique. In 2024, regional progress remained below pre-pandemic levels, with 27 countries still lagging their 2015–2019 averages. Early 2025 estimates suggest a modest acceleration, supported by record solar PV imports from China and new electrification policies in key countries.

New electricity connections in sub-Saharan Africa rose to 6.8 million in 2024, a 2% increase from 2023. However, population growth in areas without access offset much of this progress, reducing the total number of people without electricity by only 4 million. Grid expansion combined with mini-grids drove nearly 90% of new connections in 2024, with annual grid connections rising more than 11% year-on-year. Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda posted notable gains. Global sales of solar home systems (SHS) grew by 4% in 2024 according to GOGLA, with sub-Saharan Africa recording a 26% increase in new primary users. Most of these were very small SHS (lanterns and systems up to 10 Wp), which fall short of the IEA’s minimum definition of access. Excluding these, new connections from larger SHS fell from their 2022 peak.

Residential electricity demand in households with access in sub-Saharan Africa has been declining over the past decade. Although electricity access in the region has expanded from around 30% of the population in 2012 to 50% in 2024, average household consumption has fallen by around a quarter during the same period.

Over the past decade, electricity tariffs in many African countries have increased more rapidly than household income, reducing their ability to pay and forcing them to cut back on consumption. At the same time, newly connected households tended to consume less electricity than the regional average. While it is common for newly connected households to use less power initially, utility data show that their consumption has remained well below the regional average even several years after gaining access. The expansion of electrification in rural areas – where affordability is often very limited – helps to explain this trend. In addition, the lack of infrastructure and the declining cost of solar panels and batteries have prompted many households to adopt solar home systems. These systems are typically smaller in size, restricting the amount of electricity that newly connected households can use.

Affordability therefore remains a central challenge for most African households, whether in covering the cost of connection, making better use of their electricity supply, or adopting larger solar home systems. Combined with few opportunities for productive use, these constraints have kept household demand low, even as access has expanded. This pattern stands in contrast with trends observed elsewhere in the world, where rising incomes and productive uses have typically accompanied electrification.

Early data suggest that the rate of progress on new connections will remain broadly flat in 2025, as headwinds persist from high debt burdens, elevated borrowing costs, and falling development finance. Nevertheless, policy momentum is building. Based on the IEA’s detailed tracking of energy access policies, around 60% of people without access live in countries that advanced new electricity access measures in 2024 and early 2025. These include tax and consumer incentives, electrification programmes, national strategies, and other targeted actions. Such domestic initiatives could also be reinforced by international efforts, including those under South Africa’s G20 Presidency, Mission 300, and the growing focus on electricity and clean cooking access at the upcoming COP30 in Brazil. Together, these signs of momentum may help to break the current stagnation, with the IEA’s forthcoming World Energy Outlook providing a dedicated chapter on accelerating progress in both clean cooking and electricity access.

This commentary is an annual release of the IEA’s latest country data on electricity access. Its data is collected annually by the IEA from official national sources, utility data, and off-grid systems sales among other sources and is the result of concerted efforts to improve data collection in Africa through capacity-building activities.